Footnote: The quotes are from Hamlet and "Lady Lazarus", by Sylvia Plath.

There wasn't much Darla had not experienced in her time, those four
centuries which now were running out, once again. But being haunted was
new. She had never encountered a ghost before.

"Never?" Lindsey had asked when they talked about ghosts, briefly, during
the weeks when he led her back to the present day and every breath in her
unfamiliar human body seemed unnatural. "But ghosts do exist. We have files
on them. I would have thought that at least one."

One of your victims, he had meant to say, but had not finished the
sentence. Which was such a Lindsey thing to do, for many reasons. He was
attracted to the glamour of evil, she had seen that at once, but deeply
uncomfortable with the reality. If he liked to imagine her as the
triumphant killer she had been, it was without any corpses of her victims
around, let alone their ghosts. Lindsey would never smash mirrors, as she
had done before he found her in her apartment, and risk hurting that
smooth, very agreeable skin; he would store them away elsewhere, and only
use them once in a while, to torment himself, in the most bloodless way
possible.

She had not lied to him, though. She had never seen or felt a ghost, and so
it took her a while to figure out what the boy who kept crossing her path
was.

***

She first saw the boy during one of her fruitless expeditions through
alleys and bars in search of a vampire who would sire her. It had been a
week since she had fled from both Wolfram & Hart and the Hyperion, since
Angel had refused to free her from the horrible mortal misery which
threatened to engulf her. Thinking about it later, she wondered whether her
treacherous dying body was not responsible for the entire affair. She
hardly slept anymore, and when she dreamed, the dreams which used to thrill
her made the unwanted human food taste stale in her mouth in the morning,
and so she didn't eat much, either. Once she scratched one of the barely
healed cuts on her wrists open, to taste blood again, but it wasn't the
same; it made her sick.

It wasn't hard to find vampires, of course, but she had to be careful; it
had to be someone she could dominate even as a mortal, or they would leave
her to die instead of siring her, and Darla feared death as deeply as she
had ever done. "The undiscovered country, from which no traveller returns",
Lindsey had murmured when they had dinner in a rooftop restaurant, after he
had found out how much she loved a view. "But you did, Darla. What was it
like?"

She had laughed and replied with an appropriate Shakespeare quote which
told him absolutely nothing, since at this point she was enjoying the
flirtation too much to get serious. In truth, she avoided the thought that
she had been dead, truly dead, as much as possible. She could not remember,
could not remember a single thing, and this was what frightened her most.
Nothing. Angel swore there was a hell, but Darla did not remember a hell,
or anything else after he had staked her. Nothing was what awaited her once
this body succumbed to its sickness again, and she could not bear it.
Anything was preferable. So she hunted again, with predators as her prey,
always aware that the wrong decision would allow her no second chance.

The boy seemed to be hunting as well, that was the first thing she noticed.
Looking for someone, tracking someone. Unfortunately, the vampire she had
been following crossed his path, and the boy, his attention still
elsewhere, dispatched him with a speed and ease that was not quite human.
Annoyed as she was, it made her curious. Her senses were not what they used
to be, but she could still spot a vampire anywhere. Even without the
difference in smell, it was something about the way her kind moved. Her
former kind. She bit her lips and tasted the lipstick she had used to cover
her own unhealthy paleness. This boy moved like one of her own, and yet he
was not a vampire; she could hear his breath. Perhaps he was a newborn, who
did not yet understand there was no need.

She decided to speak to him. He had ruined her chance for the evening;
maybe he could become another.

"Wait," she called, for he had nearly passed her, sparing her not as much
as a glance. He must have noticed she was there, though; there was no
surprise in his voice, no sudden movement in his body, as he slowly turned
to her and said:

"You should go inside. That wasn't the only beast loose in this place."

His voice was odd; there were traces in it she had not heard for a long
time. Many vampires talked like this, mixing accents from everywhere, so
that a word pronounced in the way it used to be in the eighteenth century
was followed by slang from the present day. But this was true only of the
older ones, not of the newborns, and now that he looked at her, she did not
doubt he was young in more than appearance. There was something familiar
about his face with its high cheekbones that tugged at her memory, and yet
she was sure she had never seen it before. The neon light of the city, so
much brighter than the moon, painted his eyes very dark, but they were
open, questioning, without secrets, as she came closer. Time had not made
its mark on them.

"It wasn't," she agreed, and thought that she might have eaten him herself
in another time. He had a vulnerable mouth, too.

"May I ask," he said, as if reciting a lesson in etiquette someone taught
him, "what a lady such as yourself is doing at this time?"

The memory came like a splinter in her heart. It wasn't exactly the same
thing the Irish boy she had made into Angelus had said, but nearly so. For
a second, she could have killed the stranger for reminding her. But she
never lost her smile, the smile she had worn to deceive them all, victims,
Masters and customers alike.

"Maybe she's lonely," she replied.

The boy cocked his had and studied her, very attentively; then, in a far
more natural voice, sounding young and disappointed, he said: "You're not
one of the beasts. I thought you might be. You sound like one. Father said
the really dangerous ones always pretend." Sullen, he added: "The other
one was far too easy. I hoped there would be a challenge tonight."

Her own hopes were dashed, but she couldn't help being amused as well as
angry. "And what do you think you are, dear boy?" she laughed. "A Slayer?"
She took another step towards him. This close, she could feel the human
warmth exuding from him. She did not understand how she could ever have
taken him for a vampire. "You are pretty", she said, "but not quite pretty
enough."

Briefly, she thought of the last Slayer she had seen, who actually had not
been this different from the boy confronting her, a small, slight, slip of
a girl with angered righteousness in her face and the kind of look that
just invited life to carve its scars into her. Judging by everything
Lindsey's files had told her, life and Angel had done just that by now.

He obviously was not used to being teased or taunted. With a confused
indignation, he replied: "You should not talk this way about Slayers.
Father says they are virtuous warriors. And I," he added, trying for
impressiveness and not quite succeeding, "am the Destroyer."

Darla decided she was wasting her time here. He must be one of these young
people who fancied themselves in a kind of silly role-playing game. When
the Master had ordered her to pose as a High School girl, she had met more
than her share.

And yet, the way he had taken out the vampire earlier had not been playful
at all. Her taunt was not without unintended truth; she had seen Slayers
kill this way, quickly, efficiently, without fuss or bother.

"Who is your father?" she asked suddenly. Maybe he was the son of a
Watcher, and that had taught him how to fight.

Abruptly, his face shut down, and for the first time, he didn't appear
quite so young anymore.

"I am looking for him," he said. "He followed me here, and he should not be
on his own for long. But I will not tell you his name, for he has many
enemies in this place."

"Who hasn't," Darla commented in a dry tone. Then, in a mixture of spite
and something which felt strangely like compassion, she continued: "But you
know, there is someone here in this city who has made it his specialty to
play protector to the weak. If your father is lost, maybe you should ask
him for help. You two should get along perfectly. He takes himself too
seriously as well."

"My father is not weak. Just.not as strong as he used to be," the boy said
defensively.

"Then you've got nothing to worry about."

She felt tired. A few more hours, and the night would be over. Yet another
night without any hope of salvation, and her body was dying with every
second that passed. Without bothering with a formal goodbye, she turned
away.

"Wait," the boy said, unsure. "Maybe. who is this protector you talk of? I
would feel better if my father weren't alone while I hunt."

"Angelus," she replied, walking away from him, feeling the bitterness eat
her from the inside. "Angel. The one with the angelic face. Try for tall,
dark and self-righteous, and you can't."

"Angelus," the boy cried out, and there was so much hatred in his voice
that she stopped, stunned, turning to face him once more. He ran to her,
with inhuman speed, hands outstretched as if to grab her and shake her, but
the moment they would have touched, he disappeared. She couldn't understand
it. Earlier, she had heard his breath, had been close enough to feel the
warmth from his body, had even smelled something like burned wood and sweat
from his hair. And now he was gone, dissolved into the air like a phantom,
within the blink of an eye.

Finally, she decided it must have been a prolonged trick her sickness
played on her, and cursed Angel, for refusing to help her, and the lawyers,
for condemning her to this torment to begin with. She began her search once
more, and pushed the strange encounter in the back of her mind. Until she
saw him again.

***

The second time Darla met her ghost things were different, yet not. She was
a vampire again, for starters, being turned by Drusilla just when she had
finally accepted her mortal death. It had all been part of the game the
lawyers played with Angel, but she had taken her revenge, knowing full well
that weak and despicable as her human existence might have been, it had at
last given her back her darling boy. What Dru had done might have saved her
from the nothing beyond, but it also meant she would be separated from him
forever. If she had had any doubt, the flames engulfing her and Drusilla
burned them away.

She had never believed it possible. That he would do this to them. It was
not to kill them; if he had wanted to do that, he could have easily done it
while they were helpless, dancing in the flames, then rushing to the saving
water. One shot with an arrow, and it would have been over. And it wasn't
for joy; Angelus might have done this to a vampire he wanted to torment,
but he would have talked the whole time, would have revelled in the pain.
There was no satisfaction in Angel's gaze. There was nothing. With or
without his soul, she had always felt connected to him, had always felt she
could read him like a book, but the man watching her and Dru scream in
pain, his face utterly blank, had been a stranger. This scared her more
than anything else. Drusilla cried and shuddered in her arms, and Darla
desperately wondered what they should do now.

They needed shelter, that much was certain. In this state, they could not
defend themselves, and they had made their share of new enemies while
looking for their army. Not to mention the old ones; Lindsey might not want
to kill them, even now, but if Lilah saw them helpless, she would tell the
rest of the firm at once. Darla had been hunted by Wolfram and Hart once;
she knew how they resourceful they were.

In the end, she dragged Drusilla to an abandoned building and collapsed on
the floor. It would do for a while, till she felt stronger. Dru still
cried, wailing like a child, and for once Darla did not tell her
impatiently to shut up. In a way, she envied Dru.

After a while, she heard quiet footsteps approaching. If she had still been
human, the sound would have escaped her, especially in between Drusilla's
tears. But quiet and stealthy or not, the person coming was human; she
could smell the blood, the heat. Better to play the helpless victims then.
It wasn't that far from the truth, and if they were lucky, the human would
provide them with a meal that would help them heal instead of a fight. Her
burned skin hurt like hell, but she tensed and held herself ready.

"I heard you cry," said a young, uncertain voice, and after a beat she
realized it was not new to her. "Do you need help?"

Darla looked up, and saw the boy. He had different clothes now, as if
someone had dressed him with jeans and a t-shirt that actually fitted his
size, instead of just handing him some spares, and his hair was a bit
longer. She wasn't sure whether he recognized her, wet and burned as she
was, but he certainly recognized what she and Dru were, for he stopped in
his approach and immediately produced a stake.

"That won't do any good," Darla said, not sure whether it was true. "I
don't believe you can touch me. You will just disappear again if you try."

If she was wrong, it would be a short fight. Neither Drusilla nor herself
were in any condition for it.

The boy hesitated and frowned.

"You!" he exclaimed. "But I thought. how did you do that? You weren't a
vampire before."

His pronunciation had changed. The sounds of centuries past were nearly all
gone now. He looked at Dru. His face softened a bit, then he pressed his
lips together and declared: "This is a trick. Vampires don't just
disappear."

It wouldn't be helpful to point out he had been the one to vanish. Whatever
kind of creature he was, she could not afford yet another enemy in this
situation. But there had not been many men whom she could not mollify if
she truly needed to do so, still less boys. So Darla coated her voice in
honey and helplessness, and said:
"We're at your mercy then. But is this worthy of a hunter, destroying
wounded prey? Would this be the deed of an honourable man?"

She had not misjudged him. He put the stake away and folded his arms.

"I'll wait until you are better then," he replied warily. "But don't think
I trust you for a moment."

"Thank you," Darla breathed in her best Madonna mode, and since Drusilla's
head lay in her lap, she started stroking Dru's hair for good measure. Dru
raised her head, and for the first time looked at the boy. Her eyes widened
and she opened her mouth, but Darla gave her a quick and vicious pull.
Whatever Drusilla was going to say could not be helpful in this situation.
Thankfully, Dru seemed to understand, for once, and kept quiet.

"How is your father?" Darla asked politely, still playing the lady in
distress. It appeared to be the wrong question. The boy looked away as if
she had slapped him.

"He's dead," he replied tonelessly.

"No, he is not", Dru interrupted, the sobs still audible in her sing song
voice. "Six foot deep, thy father lies, and the other lied as well. Now
Daddy has come back, and made you go away."

He stared at her. "How do you know that?" he demanded, his voice almost
rising to a scream. Sometimes Darla wished she could gag Drusilla at will.
If she had been wrong in her suspicion, and the boy could touch them, Dru
had just brought them this much closer to being staked.

"It's the pain", Darla said hastily. "It makes her delusional." She
permitted herself a moan, which was not faked. Her entire body felt like an
open wound. It would take weeks to heal all of this, if not months. And
much blood.

"I know we're sworn enemies," she continued, and let a bit teasing creep
in her voice, "but until we're able to fight, I don't suppose you could
bring us new clothes and some ointment?"

He seemed to recognize she was joking, for he snorted, and his posture grew
less threatening. Then he surprised her by replying as if it had been an
actual question.

"I don't have anything," he said. "And I can't go back to the hotel, not
now. HE is there. I came here looking for a place to sleep. But if this is
a vampire nest, I'll go somewhere else."

"Far, far away," Dru hummed. "Ten miles beyond the edge of the world. But
this is where you came from. He'll send you farther still."

"No, he won't," the boy replied with an echo of his earlier anger. "I'm not
going anywhere."

"We won't stay here, either," Darla said soothingly. "Just for a few
hours." Then, remembering the hate in his voice when he had repeated
Angelus' name during their last encounter, she added: "Angelus mustn't find
us in this state. He'd finish what he has started."

That did it. She had his undivided attention. "HE did this to you?" he
said, disbelievingly.

Darla nodded, and one of her hands wandered from Drusilla's hair to her
cheek, ready to keep Dru's mouth shut to avoid further comments. Without
too much effort, she led a tear escape her eyes. It burned on her wounded
flesh as it rolled down.

"All this talk about being a champion," the boy muttered. "He lies as well.
I should have known."

When he sat down next to the wall of the cellar, still keeping a wary
distance, she saw how exhausted he was. He was holding himself rigid, but
there were marks on his neck and arms which she recognized. The Master had
not been the sort to try modern toys, but Darla had found a taser did have
its benefits.

"He did this to you?" she asked, in the same tone of voice he had used. For
a moment, her own voice appeared to be nothing more than an echo of his,
which startled her. She had meant to create a similarity, but not such a
strong one.

The boy, not noticing, shook his head.

"That was Fred," he said. "She hates being lied to. She's right, you know,
but I had to do it. They were his friends, not mine. They knew what he was,
and they were still his friends."

The annoying girl which had dogged Angel's every move was called Cordelia,
and the failed Watcher's name was Wesley. Darla didn't recall anyone named
Fred from the Wolfram & Hart files, either, or from Angel's dreams which
she had shared for a while. Still, it was not impossible Angel had kept a
few of his human acquaintances secret. He certainly had kept quiet about
this boy, whoever he might be.

"What is your name?" she asked. The boy eyed her distrustfully.

"I'm not going to tell you," he replied. "We're not friends, vampire. And I
will stake you, make no mistake. I just don't think anyone deserves to.why
couldn't he make it clean?"

"Why is he your enemy?" Darla asked in return, instinctively looking for a
weakness. She had to present herself and Drusilla as suffering, helpless
victims as long as possible, and an explanation about her past with Angel,
or the present situation, would not help in this regard. "What did you do
to him?"

The boy hunched his shoulders a bit more and didn't answer at first. Then,
when she had stopped waiting and had turned to Drusilla again, he muttered:

"I thought he killed my. but even if he hasn't, he still."

".deserved it?" Darla finished with just the slightest touch of sarcasm.
The boy glared at her, and she raised her hands in a mock protest.
"No doubt," she said. "Whatever you did. After today, I can come up with
some inventive scenarios myself."

In one smooth movement which belied his exhaustion, the boy rose and was at
her side.

"No, you won't," he whispered, stake raised. For a second, she felt an odd
mixture of anger, disappointment and relief. But when the hand with the
stake brushed the arm she had pulled up in defense, there was nothing but a
brief sensation of coldness. And then he was gone. Vanished in a blink, as
he had been before. It was too sudden for her to be take in, and for some
reason, it frustrated her beyond measure.

"Dru," she said finally, remembering that her companion might be insane but
possessed some useful gifts, "what is he?"

"The ghost of Christmas yet to come, Grandmother," Dru replied, a smile
breaking out of her tear-streaked face, and she clapped her hands.

***

The next time, she almost didn't notice him at all. She didn't notice much
of anything. Mortals swarmed around her, full of pulsating blood, and she
didn't even think of draining them. It would come back later, but for the
moment all in her was numb. Her hands were clenched around her suitcase.
Lindsey's suitcase, which she had filled with her dresses in a slow,
methodical way because it gave her something to do other than stare out of
the window of his apartment, or at his apartment's walls. She hadn't
realised she would be going until the elevator doors had closed behind her.
In her mind she had been miles away anyway.

Sitting among loud, irritating humans in a bus station, she suddenly became
aware she had no real destination. It wasn't like she had any particular
place to go, now. The world was her home, of course.

"Show me," he had said, all those years ago, in the alley of his backwater
village. "Show me your world."

A tumble in the alley had given him birth, and in a way it should have been
predictable to her, that it would end like this, with him throwing her out
in the street. It was her world, was it not?

Get dressed and get out.

Absently, she touched her mouth, which was still raw from their furious
union. He would return to his friends now, live the imitation of a human
life she had found him in when they had brought her back, and this time,
even his dreams would be free of her.
It occurred to her to go to Sunnydale. That was where Drusilla had said she
would go, to find Spike and bring him back to the family. Which obviously
had not happened, but if nothing else, she could ask Spike what had become
of Dru. Spike, the runt of her litter, the most irritating member of her
line. He was family, though. Who else was left but Dru and Spike? The
Master was gone.

Still, it would be humiliating, and she was not that far gone. She was
Darla yet. In the old days, Spike and Dru had been in awe of her. During
the two years after Angel had been cursed with his soul, when there was
just the three of them, Spike, cocky as he was, did not dare to challenge
her authority. After China, it had been her decision to leave them. No,
she would not present herself to Spike as a beggar for family ties. She
would find Dru another way.

(No use keeping up dignity with Dru. With Drusilla, it did not matter.)

"I won't try to stake you again," said a voice, and startled, she realized
the boy was sitting next to her on the bench. Shoulders hunched, as when
she had last seen him, a frown on his face, and his eyes shadowed. But he
did not appear to be hostile. At this point, she wasn't sure whether she
would have cared that much if he did stake her.

After their last meeting, she had decided he must be a ghost who did not
understand he was dead, someone who was connected to Angel and through him
to her. Given the enmity between them, it was presumably someone Angel had
killed. What she did not understand was why he was haunting her. It wasn't
as if she didn't have her own share of defeated opponents and dead victims.
In any case, he could not harm her; nor could he give her nourishment. He
was therefore useless and she decided to ignore him.

"It doesn't work with you anyway. I just.I need someone to talk to. And
you're a woman. Sort of."

Even the last bit the old-fashioned speech patterns he had originally had
was vanished. He must have adapted to Los Angeles completely. When was the
last time she had heard traces of brogue in Angel's voice? Before Romania,
certainly.

She would stop thinking of Angel.

"She told me she wanted me to have something real. And then, the next
morning, she didn't want it anymore. As if it had just been a game to her."

"Don't play games with me," she had told Angel when he had started to kiss
her, deadly serious. That had not been why she had come. She had wanted to
finish it, once and for all. Well, she had gotten her wish, only not as she
had intended.
"I'm not playing," he had replied, and she still heard his voice, urgent,
hungry. "I just want to feel something besides the cold."

The boy didn't seem to care she wasn't reacting to his words. Men never
did.

"But she's not like that. She.she wouldn't have done this if it didn't mean
anything to her, would she? Now she says it was wrong because of him. But
she's still with me. And he, I don't understand him, either. First he saves
my life and then he throws me out again."

"Welcome to the club", Darla said listlessly. He looked at her, bewildered,
and suddenly the confusion and hurt in his blue eyes galled her beyond
measure. He was basically offering himself as something she could pour all
her bitterness into.

"Everybody uses everybody else, my dear," she continued acidly. "Doesn't
matter whether they are human, vampire or demon. One way or another, we
screw each other. And to call this love is the most screwed up thing of
all."

She expected him to flare up, to protest, or to sulk. Instead, he looked at
her, silently, and the spark in his eyes told her she had just voiced what
he had suspected for a long time. Then, he did the most amazing thing.

"I'm sorry", he said. "I'm sorry it happened to you, too."

She stared at him. To be pitied by a stupid human who didn't even
understand he was dead and a ghost should have been the final insult, and
in a way, it was. But while a part in her was working to phrase a vicious
reply, another part felt strangely torn. It was as if something had
awakened in her, as if something tugged at her that felt as her weakened,
mortal self had done when Angel had held her and promised never to leave
her again. She did not understand it.

"How old are you?" she asked when she finally found her voice again.

He shrugged. "Eighteen, I think. I'm not sure. Time is different in
Quartoth. But Fred did a calculation during the summer, and she said it was
eighteen."

She wondered whether Fred was the woman he was in love with, and then
wondered why this should interest her at all. He was a ghost. Whatever
happened to him was past and over and did not even have entertainment
value, without any relevance to the present. Darla opened her mouth to tell
him this, but what came out was:

"Nobody should know this at eighteen."

He shrugged again, and as he looked away, a bit of his hair, which was
still too long, fell in his face. She suppressed the sudden urge to comb it
back. This was ridiculous. He was completely useless, neither prey nor help
nor anything which should matter to her.

"How old were you when you died?" he asked her.

"Which time?" she asked back, and laughed. Of course he couldn't know what
he was asking. "Dying is an art, like everything else," she said, and the
lines came back from the time she had heard them crackle over the radio,
all those decades ago, in England, when she had been searching for a
talisman which would help the Master escape his imprisonment and had been
bored enough grasp at any kind of entertainment. "I do it particularly
well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real."

"I was serious", the boy said, sounding at last somewhat insulted.

"So was I," Darla told him.

He studied her, and she could tell he was still uncertain whether she
mocked him. Such an open face, but by now life had taken the first few
bites out of it. There was still something about it that was familiar,
beyond their few encounters. She wondered whether he reminded her of
Lindsey, who had also quite a few times looked at her in similar
bewilderment, and rejected the idea as soon as it came.

"What is your name?" the boy asked quietly.

She shook her head. "Would you believe me if I told you I don't know?" she
said. "I forgot a long time ago. And then I got another name, but it is not
true anymore. Tell me your name first."

"I. I have two names as well."

"But you still don't want to tell me", she stated. "Since I'm a vampire.
Well, fair is fair. We shall have to part without introductions again, my
dear. It has been amusing, but now I'm afraid I simply have to."

Tentatively, he reached out a hand to touch her face. This time, she
thought she felt his fingertips, very briefly. Then he was gone, and she
was alone on the bench, completely disgusted with herself. As if it wasn't
pathetic enough to behave like a sentimental heroine out of a Richardson
novel because of Angel. Having conversations with lovelorn idiotic ghosts
was completely beyond the pale.

She noticed her right hand had crept to the cheek the boy had nearly
touched. With a savage fury, she rose and grabbed the next bystander,
sinking her teeth into his neck before he could even scream.

***

The boy was waiting her for her on the rooftop when she met him the last
time. Or rather, he was standing there, looking down on the city, and
appeared not the slightest bit surprised when she came to join him. She was
completely exhausted. Supernatural strength or not, her undead body had
never been meant to carry a baby. Briefly, she wondered whether her ghost
had been hired by one of the countless groups who wanted to kill her child
or herself, if only to distract her long enough so that more effective
assassins could arrive. But it wasn't as if she could do much about it. She
did not feel up to climbing down all the way again, and she wanted to take
in the view one last time anyway.

"I thought," the boy said, "I would never see you again. Or wasn't it you,
after all, in the slaughterhouse?"

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she replied anyway.

"I thought I would never see you again, either," she said. "I. I don't
think.there will be much that I."

Then she embarrassed herself by starting to cry. She hated this, and it
happened more and more often. At least this time, none of Angel's cronies
was around to witness it. She wondered whether the lawyers or the cultists
had gotten them after all and felt neither glee nor sadness at the thought.
What emotions she had were all concentrated around what she felt moving in
her, her little parasite, who had ruined her as a vampire all over again,
who confused her and made her long for the sight of him while pumping her
full of fear of the moment at the same time.

"It's a horrible world," the boy said, staring at city beneath them. The
neon lights which had never failed to charm her with their electronic magic
seemed dim tonight, as if the smog was trying its best to drown them out.
"It could be beautiful, but it's horrible. Why do you want to see it
again?"

"You didn't want a child," he stated. It wasn't a question, but she
answered anyway.

"No. I refused to believe it for a long time, and then I tried everything
to get rid of it. A vampire shouldn't have a child, you know. We're not
meant to be parents. Not.this way."

He knelt down beside her, still not looking at her.

"I loved my daughter," he said. "But I should never have been her father,
either." Abruptly, he laughed, and again it was as if she heard an echo -
her own, this time. "Though that was my choice. That was what you told me,
right? That it was my choice."

She shook her head, trying to understand.

"It was my choice, too," she whispered. "I could have stayed away from
Angel that night. And now it is my choice still. My child, my choice. I
want him to live, you see. None of them know this. Angel, maybe. But they
don't understand there isn't anything they can do. I'm the only one who
can."

"Do you know what year it is?" the boy asked her, hugging his knees. This
question, coming out of nowhere, still did not surprise her that much. He
had to figure out he was a ghost sooner or later.

"2002," she said. "We could argue about the month. The Master always
refused to bow to the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar was a matter
of principle for him, and if we knew what was good for us, we adhered to
it, too."

As if reciting a lesson, the boy said, with closed eyes: "The Master.
Heinrich Nest. A vicious vampire, the head of the order of Aurelius."

"That, too," Darla returned, and tried to listen to the noises from the
streets below. But it was as if the smog had swallowed them up as well.
"And once upon a time, he came to the deathbed of a syphilitic whore,
disguised as a priest, and sired her. It amused him to do so. She became
his favourite, and he called her Dear One."

The young voice in the darkness, laced with pain and longing, said:
"Darla."

So he did know her name.

"It is strange," she said, never stopping to cradle her belly. "When we
sire humans, we never stop to consider what kind of world it is we bring
them into. Or if we do, we see it as a gift. I never once wondered whether
it was right, except for the one time, and then it was Angelus who did the
siring. The girl was mad, you see. And he wanted to keep her this way for
the rest of eternity."

She tried to remember Drusilla's favourite song, and hummed a few chords
before giving it up. Where was Dru now? Far from here, which was all that
counted.

"I suppose we were her parents, the two of us," she said, "and then she
became mine. I never asked her whether this was her gratitude or her
revenge, because she would have told me the truth, you see. Drusilla always
does. She is annoying that way."

"Was that her in the cellar?" the boy asked. "When you were burned?"

Darla nodded. "She did tell me she did it for me, though," she mused.
"Choices again."

"Tell me what death is like," he said, letting go of his knees and
stretching out beside her on the roof. He stared up to the stars. "You must
know. Tell me she's not in pain anymore."

Her back ached, but if she laid down as well, it would be hard to get up
again.

"Drusilla?" she asked, confused.

"My daughter," he said. "It was horrible for her, in the end. When they all
turned against her. She knew they would, if they found out the truth. But
she loved them, she truly did, and she couldn't understand.I. I had to."

He stopped. A year ago, a spell had connected her and Angel during the
trials he had undertaken to save her. She had felt his emotions, and it had
been enough to make her cry out and offer her own life so he would stop.
There was no spell now, and yet she felt the despair and the loss engulfing
her with a tenfold intensity, as if the boy and she were one. Inside her,
the child moved.

"There is no pain," she said, and was barely aware she had started to cry
again. Her old fear came back, but she did not tell him about the nothing
that was stalking her, coming ever closer. He did not need to know.

"Thank you," he whispered. Suddenly, he flinched and sat up, as if he had
heard something.

But I do, she thought. And what is fear, if not something to be defeated,
finally?

"It will be my last death," she said. "And the only one I truly choose. But
I would like. just once, I'd like to."

Now she heard it as well. Footsteps, very fast. Inhumanly fast. Someone was
following her to the roof, and it had to be a vampire. She rose. The boy
made a move as if to support her, then stopped, obviously remembering he
would vanish as soon as they touched.

"Tell me your name," she said.

"I have two, don't you remember?" he replied. "They both gave me one. But I
can't be Stephen anymore, or Connor. Give me a new name. Please."

She felt torn in two directions, for the vampire now was close enough for
her to sense it had to be Angel, and the boy standing in front of her, so
close and forever out of reach, looked at her with the eyes she finally
recognized. There was no time for anything anymore, and so she leaned
forward. Her lips touched his, and for one heartbeat, the heart of the
child inside of her, she felt he was at peace again. Then he vanished. The
noises came back, the shrill sirens from below, and the lights of the city
burned almost unbearable bright in her eyes. Angel opened the door to the
roof, and she was not sure which of them the renewed despair clawing at her
belonged to.

But the love she felt, completely and unchallenged, for the first time in
her life, was utterly her own.

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